Breaking the Mold
by Eponymous Rose
Summary: With her ship under enemy control, Commander Shepard must fight a losing battle against shattered-mirror metaphors, sci-fi clichés, and, above all, herself. An alternative take on the Citadel DLC.
1. Breakneck

Commander Shepard, hero of the Citadel, destroyer of the Collector Base, curer of the Genophage, and all-around verber of the Capitalized Noun, was fighting a losing battle with herself.

The shuttle bay seemed strange, now that she was sizing it up for tactical strengths and weaknesses, all waist-high crates and soft cover and lines of sight she'd never really had to notice before. Granted, yesterday her biggest concern had been to make sure the latest shipment of Super-Yum Brand Levo Protein Bars was properly unloaded and stocked. Now she was fighting for her life in a hijacked ship making a beeline at FTL for the nearest mass relay, most of her crew was stranded back on the Citadel with nothing to tell C-Sec but a rather flimsy story about Commander Shepard's evil twin, and her damn hamster was about to be given away to the galactic humane society.

No wonder the place seemed a little off, like a... well, like a twisted mirror image of something familiar. _And why do I get the feeling I'm going to be getting a lot of mileage out of that particular comparison today?_

She risked a glance around the corner of her makeshift cover, and had to throw herself out of the path of a glimmering fireball that passed so close she could've sworn she smelled burning hair. Times like these, she missed her plain old Alliance-issue helmet. Oh, the Cipritine-manufactured visor she'd picked up on Sur'Kesh was fantastic for boosting her shields and making very clever use of her omnitool shortcuts, but at the end of the day, there was a lot to be said for a nice, mindless layer of ablative armor encasing one's skull. Especially where fire was involved.

The _whoomph_ of an incendiary grenade on the other side of the bay, near the remaining shuttle, marked Ashley's position, and it only took a moment to pick out the glint of Garrus's rifle amid the higher-stacked crates at the back of the room. With one quick glance toward the source of the last attack, Shepard moved up one set of crates, keeping level with Ashley's rate of advance.

With a flick of her eye toward an icon in her HUD, she activated the private comm link to her squad. At least the randomized frequency would ensure the clone couldn't copy _that_. "How're we doing?"

"No problems here," Garrus said, his voice just a bit too loud, and she grinned. He had to be piping music through his visor again. "Can't see the clone, but I've got a visual on Brooks down Ash's way."

"Yeah," Ashley said, "I noticed. That Crusader has a kick like a mule. Just about took down my shields in one shot."

Shepard winced. "You need backup? They've been pretty much leaving me alone out here. I'm trying not to feel insulted."

She could hear the grin on Ashley's face. "Nah, let me play bait, Skipper. This is the most fun I've had all week."

"Funny," Garrus said, "I was just thinking the same thing."

Shepard snorted. "You two are strange, strange people."

Garrus, true to form, spotted the opening and took the shot. "Oh, we learned from the best."

"Ouch." Shepard darted a glance around her crate, watching one of the remaining CAT6 heavies veer off toward Ashley's position, and took him down with a quick tech burst, followed up by half a clip from her Hurricane. "You're lucky I'm such a benevolent, caring, forgiving CO."

"Absolutely, ma'am." Ashley's tone was the picture of innocence.

When Garrus spoke again, his voice was somewhat more subdued, punctuated only by brief pauses as he lined up his shots. "Any word yet from, well, anyone? Not that I don't have absolute faith in our ability to take back the ship with, uh, just the three of us."

Shepard shrugged, more to herself than because he could actually see her. "I wouldn't expect there to be. We're out of range of personal comms, that's for sure. I'm sure they're all having a nice chat with C-Sec, clearing everything right up."

"I can never tell if you're being sarcastic or needlessly optimistic," he said, but the grin in his voice belied his exasperated tone.

"Maybe the Council can help us out on this one," Shepard mused, moving up past another set of crates.

"My vote's on sarcastic," Ash put in. "Nobody's that optimistic."

"Sarcasm is the last refuge of-" A flash of movement out of the corner of her eye was enough to jolt Shepard back a pace, just as a sniper's shot impacted the crate where her head had been a moment earlier. "Damn," she muttered, and drew back to reconsider her line of attack, watching for the shimmering outline of a cloak. "Still at least one sniper around. Unless... don't suppose that was you taking a shot at me, Vakarian? _Again_?"

She knew him well enough to catch the little anxious quaver in his subharmonics, but he hid it well, drawling, "Please. I'm a professional. But you have to admit, Shepard, two of you on the battlefield? Things might get a little confusing."

"Uh-huh."

"Oh, God," Ashley said, "please tell me we're not going to do the clone thing. You know, where you and the clone are out of sight for a second, we round the corner, find the two of you wrestling on the ground-"

Garrus cleared his throat, emphatically.

Ashley ignored him. "-and we have to figure out which is the real Shepard?"

Rolling her eyes, Shepard tossed a sentry turret over to keep the sniper busy while she moved up again. "We're wearing different armor, and she doesn't have any of my memories. Plus, much as it pains me to admit it, she's better at being angry and menacing. She'll also probably be the one shooting at you. Shouldn't be too hard to spot her."

"Fair point."

"Unless you two keep up the comedy routine," Shepard muttered, "in which case I'll probably be the one shooting at you."

Generally speaking, she was a little more of a hardass when it came to comm chatter, but this was the sort of situation where too much silence meant too much time to think, and staring across a battlefield at yourself was the sort of thing you wanted to avoid thinking about at all costs. Besides, they'd been working as a team for so long that most of their strategy was verging on instinctive. There wasn't much to be said.

"You know," Ashley said, and paused to lob out another inferno grenade, "I can't help feeling there's a metaphor in this somewhere. 'Through a mirror darkly' and all that."

Inching out of cover, Shepard could see Ash now, moving for a better flanking position. "Got visual on you, Ash. Nobody on my six, so they're pretty boxed in."

"Got it."

"Shepard," Garrus said, voice low and tense, "trio of heavies, straight ahead. I'll set you up."

She shifted her focus to the three in question just in time to watch a chain overload jump from one to the next – they didn't seem to have kinetic barriers, but she knew from experience that those jolts of electricity were agonizingly distracting, and two of the three dropped their omnishields in shock. With a quick command on her omnitool, she sent a fireball their way and watched as the energy played off the sparks of electricity rising from their armor, setting up a minor explosion that knocked them to the ground. One didn't get back up again. Another was helped down with a shot from Garrus's sniper, and Shepard obligingly emptied the rest of her Hurricane's clip into the last one.

"Hm," Garrus said, as though he'd barely noticed the interruption, "how about 'she who fights monsters'?"

Ash gave a startled laugh. "Nietzche? Seriously?"

"Knew a guy back at C-Sec who was obsessed. You have to admit, it seems a little apt just now. Staring into abysses, seeing abysses staring back..."

Shepard raised her voice. "Do you two clowns really have to deconstruct the narrative right this instant?"

"Vital for morale," Ashley said.

"Although I suppose you and I could do it later, Shepard," Garrus said, and his voice was the verbal equivalent of an eyebrow waggle. "Over a few stiff drinks?"

Rolling her eyes again, Shepard sent her sentry turret over to cover her right flank. "Debriefing, huh? All right. Just so long as the drinks aren't the only thing that's stiff."

Silence for a few moments, broken only by the rattle of assault rifle fire and the occasional ker-chunk of Brooks' Crusader shotgun. Then Ash said, "Thanks for that mental picture."

"Uh." Garrus cleared his throat, but he rallied, valiantly. "Is that a promise, Shepard? Because I think-_behind you!_"

When she was a kid, Shepard's parents had taken her with them on a routine infiltration run to a market on a little space station somewhere deep in the Terminus Systems. There'd been an ancient mirror for sale, asari design, and she'd stood in front of it and made faces at the too-serious eyes staring back at her, until her mother had quietly picked her up and taken her away, just as the first alarms had blared and the gunfire had started. Family outings in those days had always been a little weird.

Now she turned and saw those eyes reflected back at her once again. Moving like she was in a dream, she raised her arm, activated her omniblade with a twitch of her muscles, and blocked the downward-sinking blade that would've done some serious and lasting damage to her ability to breathe. The jolt of the impact rattled up and down her arm, and the clone pressed her advantage, leaning in close and shoving Shepard back against the crate, effectively minimizing her maneuverability.

(art by liberalspaceship)

Weird didn't begin to describe looking into your own eyes, she decided, and why the hell was she only remembering now that doppelgangers were supposed to be a sign of your imminent demise?

"Having trouble?" the clone murmured, and kicked down. The blow, augmented with some sort of electric shock, landed squarely on the right knee joint of Shepard's armor. With the power flow interrupted, it folded under her armored weight, sending her crashing to the ground.

Training took over. She rolled as soon as she hit the deck, and the clone overbalanced, stumbling forward a couple paces, setting her up for a perfect killshot from Garrus, back in his sniper's perch.

Give the clone credit; she knew the instant she was exposed. It was all in the eyes.

Breathing an explosive curse, Shepard slammed her left leg out straight, connecting squarely with the clone's ankle and sending her reeling a few vital centimeters to the left. The crack of Garrus's rifle was deafening, but the only real damage was a massive hole punched clean through next week's supply of Generic Brand Dextro Meal Packs.

Not a second wasted, the clone sprang to her feet and stumbled around the corner of the crate, firing off a combat drone as she went. Shepard, still winded and sprawled on the floor, just stared at it. The drone stared back, and, almost as an afterthought, sent a stinging jolt rippling across Shepard's shields.

"Shepard, what the hell!" Oh, she knew those subharmonics. Garrus was _pissed_.

"I'm okay." Shepard incinerated the drone with a quick omni-command, then dragged herself to her feet. Her right knee still felt strange and wobbly, even though her HUD's diagnostic routine assured her the damage to the suit had been repaired. She was shaking all over.

"I had the shot."

Shepard took a breath, pivoting carefully to glance around the corner of the crate. Two heavies, apparently the last grunts standing, were advancing on Ashley's position, although they were keeping a respectable distance; she'd been lobbing out inferno grenades every now and then, just to keep things interesting, although her supply had to be getting low by now. "I know. Where is she now?"

"Making her way back to Brooks." There was a question there, one that ran along the lines of: _if I have the shot, should I take it?_ Shepard made an executive decision to ignore it, in large part because she didn't know the answer and she needed a few more seconds to think it through. No good came from trusting your instincts implicitly, but it always paid to give them a fair hearing.

"Yeah, I've got eyes on both of 'em now," Ash said. "I only count two more CAT6 soldiers lurking around. Shield guys."

"Confirmed," Garrus added.

Shepard exhaled. "Okay, that's what I counted, too. Add in Brooks and the... other me, and that's nearly even odds, especially since they're starting to bunch up. Let's finish this up, in case they have reinforcements waiting. Ash, you keep drawing their fire, try and keep them herded together. Garrus, move in on their right flank from as far back as you can manage, run interference with concussive shots, and keep an eye on the damn elevator. I'll move in on their left flank – lots of cover here."

"Understood," Garrus said, his tone clipped and short, and Ash voiced her acknowledgement a little less acerbically.

Shepard hesitated, wanted to say more, wanted to say, _You know how you look in a mirror, and all of a sudden you go, hey, so this is who I am when I'm not living inside my skull, this is the end result of everything I plan and work for and dream about? Can you imagine what it's like to see something new there, something ugly and twisted and terrified and deeply, unfathomably wrong, every mistake you never made right there in the flesh, grinning down at you? How can you look at that and not want to do something – anything – to set it right?_

Instead, she said, "And Garrus? Take the shot if you get it," because hell, her judgment wasn't exactly trustworthy on this one. "Let's retake the _Normandy_, travel back to the Citadel in style." She could practically hear the sigh of relief in Garrus's affirmative reply. Ash's "Hell yes!" was even less ambiguous.

An echoing rattle of assault rifle fire told her Ash was throwing herself into her role as distraction with gusto. Good. With a quick glance to confirm that the CAT6 goons were still moving toward their boss, Shepard programmed a simple trajectory for her combat drone to weave a likely-looking path toward Ashley's position – hopefully it would provide a passable decoy to help make up for the fact that she was going to be limping most of the way across the cargo bay, the long way around.

She moved uneventfully for a good dozen meters, shifting from cover to cover, grinning as her combat drone started taking stray shots. Then Ash yelped, once, and Shepard watched her HUD with a numbing jolt of adrenaline until the shield readouts finally flickered back to life. "I'm fine," Ash said, sounding winded. "Damn near took my shields down."

A few paces later, Garrus muttered an explosive curse. "There's still a sniper down there! Just a couple meters behind the heavies, back where Brooks and the clone are holed up. Be careful. Lousy aim, but everyone's gotta get lucky sometime."

"Is that a promise?" Shepard said, by way of testing the waters.

"Oh, lord." Ashley's eyeroll was audible.

Garrus snorted a laugh that sounded equal parts startled and relieved. "Absolutely."

"Well, hey. I don't know about you guys, but I'm motivated to get this over and done with ASAP."

"Sooner would be preferable."

"You know," Ashley said, and there was a pause while she exchanged assault rifle fire with the heavies, "I helped raise three sisters through their teenage years, and you two are still just about the horniest idiots I can imagine-" She paused again, but this time it seemed more like a wait-did-I-say-that-out-loud kind of pause. "Er. All due respect. Ma'am."

"Uh-huh." _All due respect._ A little familiarity could be a wonderful thing.

Shepard glanced around the corner of the final crate, counted off the two heavies, the shimmering outline of the sniper behind them, and there-yes! Not five meters away, Brooks and the clone were huddled behind the same box, taking turns sending suppressing fire in Ashley's general direction. Perfect.

Vocal commands would have the obvious downfall of volume, so she sent Ash and Garrus the signal to attack via omnitool. Ash's grenade was perfectly placed, bathing nearly all of the enemy combatants with a wash of flame, and Garrus's chain overload detonated a series of fire explosions that actually felt warm against Shepard's skin even at this range. She took the opportunity to throw a sentry turret into the mix, and the shouting was soon loud enough to-

The deck bucked beneath her, violently slamming her into the crate at her side. She clutched at it with one hand, the other still gripping her SMG, and tried to keep her balance as the cargo bay shuddered and jolted, crates crashing to the ground.

"What the _fuck_ was that?"

It took Shepard a moment to realize she wasn't the one who'd shouted – the clone sounded just as confused as she was. The ground pitched again, and it took her spacer-kid instincts mere moments to explode into overdrive. _Attack. We're under attack!_

"Who the hell is shooting at us?" That was Brooks, sounding just as panicked.

"Shouldn't you be on top of this sort of thing?" Garrus yelled, from wherever he was hiding.

Confusion to the enemy can't be a bad thing, right? Shepard moved out a little more into the open, preparing to send another burst of fire into the mess of combatants. The ship rocked again, more violently this time. Her knee gave out beneath her.

A strange prickling feeling was her only warning, and then a rough, electric jolt traveled across the surface of her shields, overloading them with a thoroughness that would've been mildly interesting to watch if it hadn't been so damn painful. She hunched against the agony, already trying to throw herself back blindly into cover, but the sniper shot was nearly instantaneous.

The first thing she noticed was that her visor had stopped working, the display just gone, leaving everything looking too-blue and not bright enough. The second thing was a weird tickling down the side of her face, which resolved itself into a tinny ringing in her left ear. The third thing could best be described as excruciating pain.

And then she was on the deck, her cheek pressed against the too-cold floor, staring across an unfathomable distance at a pair of boots, watching a slow, lazy trickle of blood stream down the slanted floor towards them. Red blood. Her blood.

With an effort, she rolled onto her back, heard the soft tinkle of the remnants of her shattered visor against the floor, and stared up into her own face, into the narrowed and too-serious reflections of her own eyes, glimmers of light among the encroaching shadows.

"Okay, yeah," Shepard said, and heard her own voice slurring. "Definitely should've gone with the helmet."


	2. Breakaway

Things got blurry for a while. Shepard was okay with that. Blurry was nice, nonthreatening. Blurry didn't make unreasonable demands of her precious shore leave time, blurry wasn't out to brutally murder everyone she cared about, blurry didn't steal her ship, and above all, blurry wouldn't try to give away her hamster.

Slowly, ponderously, that phrase set her mind back in motion. _Give away,_ she thought. _Wouldn't it have been easier to just starve the little guy? Leave him in a dark corner somewhere? Space him out of spite? Someone's got a soft spot._

Immensely satisfied with her logic for reasons that escaped her now but were probably very clever and relevant, she gave herself over to blurry again.

Or tried. Something was batting at her face, low and heavy and cold, all sharp, clean angles. Something warm smeared at her temples, and a too-pleasant buzz set the edges of her consciousness vibrating, and then she was keyed-up, grabbing hold of that feeling and dragging herself back to its source, and all that waited there was a stray shot to the arm, a knife wound in the gut, a dozen minor concussions and hundreds of scrapes and bruises. Yeah, she knew what medigel overkill felt like. Bubbly didn't begin to cover it.

With a yelp, she sat up, nearly colliding with Garrus in the process, then slumped back, barely catching herself with her elbows as her head started spinning. He'd hardly moved at her dramatic response, just stayed crouched beside her, one hand still covered in the pinkish goo that medigel always became whenever it got mixed with too much human blood.

And his head was tilted so light glinted off his visor, deflecting attention from his eyes, his expression. It was a frustrating, childish habit. He got scared; she understood that. She did, too, but she always made a conscious effort not to close herself off. She'd meet his eyes.

A muted throbbing at her left temple reminded her about the whole getting-shot thing, and she raised a hand to probe carefully at the slimy, sealed wound. _And then some. How much of this stuff did he slather on?_ The shattered polymer electronics on the ground told most of the story: the shot had crashed through the edge of her visor, leaving only a light gash in the skin, a few scrapes from shrapnel, and a sick-sore ache when she prodded too much that brought to mind lovely words like 'concussion' and possibly 'projectile vomiting'. She swallowed, hard, and tried to think of pleasant things. Meadows. Hamsters. Hamsters frolicking through meadows.

She exhaled. "I'm okay. Just got knocked for a loop. Humans bleed a lot from the head, remember?" _Turians do, too_.

Garrus cleared his throat, but took the hint and leaned back while she sat up. She glanced over, watched his face appear and disappear behind the glare of his visor as he toyed with meeting her eyes. "Rings a bell," he said, and his hoarseness made her reconsider the urge to tease him for his over-liberal application of medigel.

Well. She'd been putting it off, but there was no avoiding it now. She looked up.

The barrels of four guns stared back at her. As inanimate objects went, they were downright expressive in their disapproval of her.

"Ah," she said. "You're still here."

At least their numbers had been whittled down-all that remained was Brooks, a smug-looking sniper, one heavy sporting singed armor, and good ol' through-a-mirror-darkly, staring at her with a carefully blank expression. Ash stood a few feet away, assault rifle and sniper on the floor next to her, along with Shepard and Garrus's weapons and omnitools. A hell of a bruise was already welling up around her right eye-another person who could've used a good helmet. She met Shepard's gaze, for a moment, and quirked a guilty half-smile.

Like the smashed-up visor on the ground, all the pieces here told a story. Once they'd figured out what had happened, Ash and Garrus must have given up their positions to come charging in. Shepard couldn't quite bring herself to be annoyed. The wound may have been relatively minor, but people generally didn't aim for the head when they were shooting to disarm or disable, and the second shot would almost certainly have been fatal. For the most part, Shepard was very much in favor of stalling for time if it meant living another day. Or another few minutes, as the case might be.

Which begged the question: given that their enemies had the guns and the superior position, why weren't they all dead?

As a gentle reminder, the ship gave a violent, jolting shudder, sending crates crashing to the ground and making Shepard infinitely grateful she hadn't tried anything so physically taxing as standing up. Ash tensed, like she was going to jump all four of them at once, but the clone whipped up a combat drone to keep her busy, and then Brooks brought her Crusader around to bear with a broad grin. Very sensibly, Ash froze on the spot.

With a deep sigh that set a weird, sympathetic flutter echoing in Shepard's own chest, the clone crouched down, looking her in the eyes. "Tell them to stop."

Garrus, beside her, cleared his throat and moved a little more prominently between them-nothing overt, just making his presence known. The clone's eyes flicked to him, as did the muzzle of her Hurricane, almost instinctively. Even without weapons, a turian in heavy armor could do a hell of a lot of damage, and if this Shepard really had spent most of her short life in a Cerberus lab, the experience now must be more than a little overwhelming. But the moment passed, and the clone shifted her aim back to Shepard with an emphatic quirk of one eyebrow. Catching the hint, Garrus backed off.

Shepard found her voice. "You know, I'd love to, but these people are pretty terrible at following orders-"

The clone waved a dismissive hand. "Not them. Your friends attacking the ship. Tell them to call it off or we kill you here and now."

"Uh," said Shepard, and glanced over at Garrus, who shrugged, and at Ashley, who seemed just as perplexed. "I'd love to, but I have no idea who they are."

The ship shook again, and now even the throbbing in her head was taking a backseat to a growing sense of worry. Between a childhood spent growing up on spaceships and the _Normandy_'s more recent misadventures, she was intimately familiar with the particular hollow, echoing thud of long-range projectiles smashing themselves to pieces against kinetic barriers. These shots had a buzzing undertone that brought to mind words like 'barrier overload' and 'hull breach' and 'horrible fiery death'. They weren't returning fire, which meant the other ship would be free to advance at will, and if it closed the range enough to use its GARDIAN lasers...

The clone was watching her, eyes narrowed, and Shepard summoned up a bright smile. _Trying to figure out if I'm lying? Good luck with that. We've got a fantastic poker face._ "All my friends are back at the Citadel, remember? Well, not _all_ my friends." She paused. "Actually, yeah, pretty much all of them. I haven't been great about keeping in touch."

Ashley cleared her throat emphatically, and Shepard shot her a glare, on principle. After another moment spent watching Shepard, the clone brought her omnitool to her lips. "Marshall, what the hell is going on up there?"

After a loaded pause, Marshall-the pilot, presumably-replied, his voice pitched a little too high and nervous. "Uh. I was kind of hoping this was part of the plan."

"You thought our plan was to get shot down," the clone said, and Shepard had to admit that maybe she had a little more talent for deadpanning than the original model.

"Well," he said, "I just assumed that since they're Cerberus, they're with us."

The silence in the shuttle bay was absolute.

"I mean. Um. They are with us, aren't they?" Nobody said anything in reply to that, and, with the air of someone desperately trying to fill an awkward gap in conversation, he plowed on. "This is all a long con, right? Running from Cerberus? We were always meant to rendezvous with them later, right? They're just signalling their arrival."

The ship bucked under them again. The clone straightened, throwing her shoulders back and squaring her jaw-_Neat trick. Have to start trying that in front of the mirror._-and barked, "Cerberus? Do these feel like fucking warning shots, you colossal dipshit?"

"That's, uh, I find that language a little hurtful, boss."

The CAT6 sniper made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a snicker. Garrus leaned in close and murmured, "Confusion to the enemy's always a good thing, right?"

Shepard pursed her lips. "Usually, yes."

The pilot cleared his throat. "Also, um, I just found the readout. CBT emitters are down, whatever that means, and conventional shields are at 12%. Next shot should take them down. Armor's intact, but the readings are kind of weird and, uh, I think I'm looking at a half-finished line of code here. Must still be under repairs."

Shepard sighed. "But on the other hand, sometimes confusion to the enemy just means you get horribly killed in the crossfire."

"Damn," Garrus said.

"Yup."

"Shut up," Brooks snapped.

"Okay," the clone said, and rubbed absently at her temple, the all-too-familiar sign of a headache even the damn cybernetics couldn't keep up with. "How did they find us, Brooks?"

Brooks frowned, and just for a second, Shepard caught a glimpse of the goofy, earnest Alliance officer she'd been pretending to be. Another mask, slipping into place without conscious thought. "Why are you looking at me?"

"Because you're very talented at double-crossing people," the clone said. "Because I don't trust you any further than I can throw you. Take your pick."

The moment wasn't anywhere near as tense as it should have been, and Shepard realized this had to be a conversation they'd had many times before. Brooks grinned. It wasn't a pleasant expression. "No. Wasn't me. Wish I'd thought of it, though. Could've probably made a fortune, selling you all out to Cerberus. Hey, Marshall, is it too late to get them on the line and signal that I'm giving you all up?"

"Don't even joke about that," the sniper put in, and she was definitely grinning somewhere behind that helmet. "Dipshit up there will actually do it."

"Okay, this is a really hostile work environment," Marshall said, and then paused. "Um, they're actually within communications range, though. What should I send?"

The clone was gnawing on her bottom lip. "Stealth system or not, they shouldn't have been able to track us through FTL without someone tipping them off via QEC or something-sensors can't scan faster than light. That means we've got a leak or bug or something feeding them information. I'm guessing they won't shoot us down while they have a chance at capturing the ship. Don't send anything, but keep an eye out for conventional outbound communications, just in case."

"Right," Marshall said. "Uh. You do know I'm pretty much just pilot because I got to the chair first, right? And, uh, I've never flown something with this many... buttons."

The clone sighed, this time rubbing both temples, then waved a hand at the sniper. "Tia, right? Go up there and walk him through it. We can handle these three."

Tia saluted smartly, then marched off toward the elevator. That just left Brooks, the clone, and the one remaining heavy, who'd deactivated his omnishield and appeared to be watching the proceedings with a sort of dazed interest. Not for the first time, Shepard wondered just how many of these CAT6 types were genuine Category 6 Alliance discharges, and what they'd done to earn that designation. They hadn't fought well, and their allegiance to the clone seemed shaky at best. _Much like her entire plan, really. Capture my ship, steal my identity, and then what? Go on a galactic joyride while carefully avoiding everyone who's actually met me, all while the galaxy burns?_ A slow sinking in the pit of her stomach vied with the throbbing in her head for attention. Bad plans that belonged to the enemy were fantastic. Incredibly stupid plans that belonged to the enemy, on the other hand, generally meant someone was playing a longer game. That was never a good thing.

The ship jolted again, and this time the deck seemed determined to buck them off. Caught mid-step, the clone lost her balance, and Brooks automatically bent to catch her. The barrel of her gun drifted.

Shepard sometimes gave Joker crap about his claims of being so attuned to the _Normandy_ he could predict the ship's every movement, but even as the inertial dampeners strained to take the hit in stride, Shepard found a steady footing in the shuddering, chaotic roll of the deckplates, and shoved forward, ignoring the lingering weakness in her knee, taking the off-balance clone in a clumsy tackle. Brooks, on equally shaky footing, went down in a heap with them.

The remaining CAT6 heavy, at least, reacted quickly, sending a frantic burst of assault rifle fire in her general direction, but her recharged barriers melted the shots before they could connect, and then the clone twisted with a curse, trying to bring her Hurricane to bear.

Shepard retorted with an instinctive punch to the face.

Despite everything she'd been through, she'd stubbornly hung on to her techie's aversion to CQC, and aside from the occasional sparring session with Vega (not to mention 'sparring' sessions with a certain gunnery officer), she was sorely out of practice. More through luck than skill, her punch connected, but her arm had been locked at the elbow, and the impact jolted painfully from joint to joint, all the way up to her shoulder. The clone fell back, spitting blood, and Shepard rolled away, trying to get her feet under her for some sort of clearing kick, half-doubled over her aching arm.

As it happened, she didn't need to make up the distance; Ash, having recovered her own balance, sent a spinning roundhouse into Brooks' side before she could get to her feet, and she fell with a whoosh of air. Garrus, on the other hand, had gone straight for the heavy, taking his feet out from under him with a well-placed hook of his armored spur, then delivering a precise blow to the side of his head that left him crumpled on the floor.

Clenching and unclenching her hand, Shepard straightened, kicked the clone's gun out of her questing hand, and tried to look like she'd planned the whole attack masterfully from the start. Looming was something she never did enough, she decided, standing over the clone with arms crossed. Looming was fun.

The clone sniffed loudly, then coughed. "Nice punch," she said. "I think you broke my nose."

Shepard rolled her shoulder, going for casual but probably falling a little short of the mark when she winced instead. "You're not trying to bring my guard down with flattery so you can get at your omnitool and set me on fire, are you?"

"Well," the clone said, "not _now_ I'm not."

"Commander," Ashley called, and tossed Shepard her own 'tool and Hurricane from the pile of weapons, before crouching down and pinning Brooks to the ground. Garrus looked downright gleeful to have his weapons back in hand, although he very professionally tamped down his grin when he realized she was watching. She couldn't fault him for that; she'd felt utterly exposed without her omnitool, like the universe had suddenly realized she really was nothing more than a moderately quick brain in a squishy body encased in a thin shell of armor. She'd never liked feeling squishy.

Garrus nudged the CAT6 guy with one foot, and glanced up when he groaned. "Huh. Didn't kill him."

Brooks too was out of breath, but seemed to be coming around, judging by the glare she shot Shepard, which was surprisingly effective considering how thoroughly her face was mashed into the deckplates. And that was a problem, wasn't it? They weren't exactly in a position to take or keep prisoners, as the past few minutes had illustrated well enough. Shepard saw the exact moment the clone realized this, watched the dazed amusement in her eyes transition sharply into stubborn defiance. _Does she think I'm just going to execute her?_

She half-raised her weapon, watching the clone flinch in response, and a dark smear of rage and fear at the back of her mind uncoiled slowly, murmuring, _Shouldn't I?_

Ash and Garrus were being strangely quiet, she realized, and they were watching her so intently she suspected they were actually holding their breath. She swiped the back of her hand against the mess of blood and medigel dripping down the side of her face, but the bleeding had stopped, and even the headache was clearing. She imagined the whirring servos of the cybernetics, pictured them piecing together damaged tissue, repairing minute scrapes on the skull, transporting away the excess clotted blood. She wasn't the squishy engineer anymore, not really. A hard, cold machine lived beneath her skin and called itself by her name.

She looked at the clone again, the blood streaming from her nose, the screaming fury and bone-deep frustration in the tense lines of her body, and thought, with a weariness that surprised her, _There but for the grace of God..._

The clone's omnitool lit up with a new message, and Shepard nearly jumped as Tia's voice rang out when the call was patched through automatically. "Hey, boss, this is bad. They're staying put out there – probably think we're luring them in for some sort of trap – but before too long they're gonna be coming alongside to board. Still, no outgoing comms that we've been able to pick up."

It took Shepard an embarrassingly long time to realize she could just pick up the omnitool and speak into it without giving away the shift of power in the shuttle bay. _About time I used this clone thing to my advantage._ "Uh. What size is this ship we're talking about?"

"Big," Tia said, and Marshall chipped in to add, "I think it's a fast cruiser. Bigger than us."

The crew complement on a Cerberus cruiser was generally around a hundred. "Stand by for orders."

"Yeah, no rush," Marshall said. "It's not like, when they get here, they're going to board the ship about four feet away from where we're standing."

Shepard deactivated the comm, and frowned down at the clone. "So you have no idea whatsoever how they found us, how they've been tracking us?"

Again, the clone's eyes darted toward Brooks, but she shook her head. "I don't know if you noticed, but I have a pretty good reason to want to stay the hell away from Cerberus. We both do."

Brooks shrugged, having apparently tamped down her anger to look as casual as possible given that she was face-down on the floor with Ashley's knee pressed into her back. "They don't like me much at the moment."

"Shepard," Garrus murmured, and it was half-reminder, half-statement of support. Whatever she did in the next few minutes, he and Ash would be behind her. She knew that.

_Great. We'll see how well that loyalty holds up when I lead the three of us right over a cliff._

She exhaled, slowly, and brought the omnitool back up, opening the comm link with Tia again. "Okay, we might have a little work to do to get the weapons up to speed, depending on how far along the repairs are, so you two had better get back down here. Grab what weapons you can find, make sure your shields are at full strength. If you can rig something to blow the airlock if they manage to come through, do it, but don't stick around too long." When they'd murmured assent, she toggled the comm system off again and looked down. "Do you have any others aboard the ship?"

The clone was staring at her like she'd just suggested they all attend a nice evening of elcor karaoke. Shepard didn't blame her, but she needed her to get past that confusion, so she repeated the question. "Uh, well," the clone said, and her features belatedly settled into stubborn defiance. "I'm not giving away our positions."

"I'll take that as a no," Shepard said, and sighed. "Okay. If I give you back your weapons, are you going to just shoot us and make us do the whole dramatic battle thing again?"

"Shepard," Garrus said, again, and this time there was more than a little doubt in his voice: he sounded downright aghast. Shepard glanced around, saw the way his jaw had dropped, then looked over to see a similar expression on Ashley's face. The clone's eyes were just as wide, and even the half-conscious heavy had stopped groaning. Only Brooks had taken on a serious, contemplative expression.

"Look," Shepard said, "I don't know what Cerberus wants, but I have a sneaking suspicion it's the _Normandy_. Call it a hunch. We all have a vested interest in making sure they don't get it, and I'd much rather deal with eight-to-a-hundred odds than three-to-a-hundred. We get the bigger threat out of the way, then we can we duke it out between ourselves later." _And maybe this whole thing will turn out to be a moot point anyway, if the good guys ever catch up to us. We could use the cavalry about now._ She shot a sidelong glance at Brooks, who for all she knew was thinking the same thing.

Garrus half-shook his head, drifting toward his patented skirting-with-insubordination tone. "I don't think that's a good idea, Shepard. I'm still not convinced they didn't plan this." Even after all these years, she sometimes still had trouble reading his vocal harmonics, but now he was practically vibrating with distress. He hadn't forgotten that she'd kept him from taking the shot when he had it.

Shepard looked away, glanced at Ash, and immediately wished she hadn't. She was pretty sure she was doing the right thing, for a given value of 'right' that boiled down to 'we all survive the next ten minutes', but Ashley had gone from surprised to... to calm. Understanding. Shepard knew she was remembering Horizon, remembering another Cerberus automaton who'd all but begged for a second chance. A chill ran up and down her spine, and she had to look away from the pity buried in that steady gaze.

In the end, she looked back to the clone, who was still wide-eyed, half-frozen in place, a wounded animal staring into the jaws of another trap. _I don't owe her anything,_ she thought, trying the notion on for size. Distant echoes of another time, another place, when she'd been forced to weigh practicality against emotion. _But I won't let fear compromise who I am._

She offered a hand to the clone, heard Garrus suck in a breath behind her, and hoped like hell she wasn't about to make the biggest mistake of her life.


	3. Breakthrough

Five minutes later, nobody had been shot in the back. Shepard decided to count that as a win.

Self-interest was a wonderful motivator, she reflected, watching Brooks, the clone, and the dazed-looking heavy (named Smith, apparently, the blandness of which seemed to suit him) reload and rearm themselves. And, okay, Ash kept accidentally pointing her rifle at Brooks, and Garrus was even less subtle about it, never relaxing from a tight ready stance. Apart from their initial protests, though, they hadn't made any further complaints, which made her think she was probably doing the right thing here, even if it might be for the wrong reasons. In terms of sheer numbers, it made sense to shore up their reserves, and if she could work out some of her issues with the clone in the process, hey, so much the better, right?

They all stiffened and brought their weapons more-or-less to bear in the same direction when the elevator pinged open at the back of the shuttle bay, but it was only Tia and Marshall, back from the CIC. They took in the tableau with remarkable composure, and then Tia said, "Told you it was the wrong Shepard calling. Pay up."

Marshall snorted. "If we get through this alive, sure."

Tia made a point of looking Shepard up and down. "Somehow, I get the feeling I might actually survive to collect."

Shepard stared at them. They stared back. The entire standoff was the dramatic equivalent of a shrug. "I forgot how much I hate working with mercenaries," Garrus muttered.

The clone seemed to be taking this betrayal of loyalties in stride, although Shepard fancied she could make out a dark gleam in her eyes. "You and me both," she murmured, nearly too quiet for Shepard to hear.

"We brought presents," Tia said, and tossed a pouch of grenades to Ashley, who caught them without comment. "Spare thermal clips for anyone who needs 'em. And Dipshit here swears up and down he managed to rig the airlock with proximity mines, although I wouldn't count on them actually going off."

"Fuck off," Marshall said, amiably.

"And hey," Tia said, and pulled off her helmet, turning to Shepard with a half-grin, half-smirk that was nowhere near sincere. "About me shooting you in the head. No hard feelings?"

Something twisted in Shepard's gut-the girl had to be at least in her early twenties, but she looked much younger, all wide brown eyes under a helmet-flattened mat of curly black hair. To cover her surprise, she straightened and dragged on the mask of Commander Shepard, Legend, Hardass, and Slayer of Dragons. Well, Reapers. Sometimes on foot. "I'll be less forgiving the second time around."

Tia shrugged, pulled her helmet back on and locked the seals. "Then I'll have to be more accurate."

The clone snorted a laugh, and Shepard crouched to scoop up some thermal clips from the communal pile to cover a moment of stark confusion, the same uncomfortable lack-of-revelation that had followed saving the clone from Garrus's bullet. She remembered him all those months ago in his sniper's perch on the Citadel, balanced on a knife's edge between black and white; at the time she'd been frustrated and frightened at his inability to see what lay beyond. Now she saw the same open worry reflected in the tight set of his jaw, the nervous tap-tapping of his talons against the stock of his rifle.

_You and me and grey, huh?_ she thought, and pushed herself to her feet, wincing as her knee sent up a slightly more vehement protest. Definitely felt like a sprain, and she hoped it was the sort of thing where you were supposed to keep putting weight on it, because she had no intention of limping her way to the finish on this one.

She straightened, and seven pairs of eyes snapped to her with expressions ranging from obedience to curiosity to open contempt. About par for the course, really.

"So," Ash said, and stopped glaring at Brooks long enough to toss Shepard a spare helmet from the armory. Shepard donned it gratefully, hissing as it slid into position flush with the scrapes on the side of her head. "How do you want to play this?"

Shepard opted for a dramatic pause while she waited for the helmet's HUD to come online, syncing with Garrus and Ash's combat suit telemetry – both of them had full kinetic barriers back, and armor integrity readings looked good all around. "The _Normandy_'s notoriously good at defying scanners, so I'm betting that cruiser's going to keep its distance until it can confirm we really do have our shields down. Running isn't a good plan, since whatever tipped them off this time is only going to lead them straight to us again, and we're sort of at an advantage right now in that we've confused the heck out of them by just sitting around while they tried to blow us up. That's bought us some time." She glanced at the clone. "I imagine you did your homework. What do you know about the _Normandy_'s weapons systems?"

The clone's lips tightened, but after a moment she blew out a resigned breath, recognizing the probe as a way to gauge how useful she could be. "Thanix cannon, based on illegal turian salvage from the Reaper Sovereign. Fires every five seconds. It's an overpowered projectile weapon rather than a directed energy beam, which means conventional shields have trouble defending against it when they're used to things like GARDIAN lasers. Iron-uranium-tungsten alloy, if you're curious." She glanced up at Shepard with a crooked smile. "Of course, Cerberus is well aware of all these closely guarded secrets, and after salvaging materials from the Collector base, I'm willing to bet they've come up with a way to take on at least one shot from that monster, assuming it shoots straight."

Garrus, partway through the act of checking his rifle scope, made a half-strangled noise. Shepard grinned. "It'll shoot straight. Trust me."

Brooks stared at the clone. "Where on earth did you pick all that up?"

"I like guns. Besides, I needed to cram a lifetime of engineering training into six months, remember?" the clone said, with only a faint hint of annoyance overlaying a sort of fond reminiscence; this was another familiar topic of discussion, it seemed. "I did actually read a book, Maya, believe it or not. You should try it sometime."

"Hm," Brooks said, but she was stifling a smile.

_Probably thinking just how useful that knowledge will be once she's killed us all and stolen the ship for herself,_ Shepard thought darkly, and rolled her shoulders. "Okay. In combat, this ship is pretty reliant on the AI, and since some very clever individual not particularly burdened by foresight seems to have disabled her-"

Marshall shrugged. "Yeah, I disabled whatever looked, uh, able to be disabled. No clue how to get things up and running again."

The clone smirked. "I told him to throw a wrench in the works. He improvised."

Shepard exhaled, bringing a hand up to the faceplate of her helmet, as though rubbing it could somehow help put a dent in the headache throbbing behind her eyes. She was no slouch with machinery, but EDI's systems went so far beyond complex they bordered on the arcane. "That's not something I'd be overly proud of, since it may well get us all killed. But what's done is done. I say we send a team to engineering, see if we can get the cyclonic barriers back up. Assuming our first shot doesn't connect for whatever reason, we need to be able to hold out for the time it'll take to set up the second."

"Autorepair protocols are probably in place," the clone said, rubbing at the back of her neck and staring up at the windows looking into the engineering deck. "Shouldn't be too bad. They must've wanted to disable the ship as efficiently as possible without damaging her too badly, and taking down even one CBT emitter destabilizes the whole barrier system and triggers the conventional shielding, which is much easier to deal with. Just took a handful of precision shots to do that, which means limited overall damage. Not much to fix. You get the cannon up and running, you should be set."

Shepard felt a weird chill run down her spine; the clone's words echoed her own thought processes almost exactly. It had been fundamentally _easier_, somehow, to think of the clone as a vague, imperfect copy, a familiar face that made threats and had a way with bluster and beneath it all was terrified and fundamentally broken. But this? This was confidence, self-assurance. Competence. Coming from her, it was terrifying.

"Okay," she said, a bit weakly. "Yeah, agreed." She glanced at Garrus, who nodded, and Ash, who just gave a quirk of her eyebrows in reply. After a moment's thought, Shepard added, "Tia, you on board with this?"

Tia straightened, snapping to a mockery of attention. "Oh, I'm just a dumb grunt, ma'am."

"Uh-huh," said Shepard, ejecting the half-spent thermal clip from her Hurricane to replace it with a new one. "Humor me."

Tia made a vague motion with one hand as she spoke, "Well, you could probably modify the CBT field to compensate for the damaged emitter. You know, just leave it out altogether, make them do a little scrambling in their targeting algorithm when they go to shoot it out again. Should be able to use some simple linear filtering to compensate for the field's skew."

"Those almost sounded like real words," Marshall said, a bit accusingly. Tia turned to him and managed to project a smirk even through her helmet.

"That's a really good idea. I know I wouldn't have the first idea how to implement it," Shepard said, and glanced over in time to see Ashley wincing at what she probably saw as a show of weakness. Tia, however, actually deflated a little, and Shepard was finally starting to think she had the kid's number: just another smartass constantly looking for a chance to prove how clever she was, always spoiling for a fight she knew she could win. Giving someone like that a unilateral vote of confidence tended to knock 'em for a loop. _Not that I'd have any personal experience on that front..._ "I think you'd better come with me on the engineering side of things."

"You'll need someone on the Thanix," Garrus said. "The second you get those shields back up, you'll want to take a shot."

Shepard moved over to a control panel, punching in command authorization codes to patch through to the information flow in the CIC. The Cerberus cruiser was matching their momentum, but making no signs of aggression. Yet. "Just how much does the _Normandy_'s targeting system rely on EDI?"

He frowned, thoughtfully. "More now than before, actually. The Alliance thought she was just a VI. They had no problem with patching her into all sorts of systems. That said, we should be able to do a little shooting on manual without much trouble."

"So that's one on targeting computer and one on firing control."

"Yeah, we'll need two."

Shepard exhaled, glanced over the group, and her gaze stopped on the still-silent Smith. "Any tech knowledge, soldier?"

"Very good at killing things, ma'am," he said, tonelessly.

"He's also really good at being creepy," Marshall added, in a stage-whisper.

"That's a no, then." Shepard took a breath, bracing herself, and looked at the clone. "Okay. You go with Garrus." She raised her voice a little, anticipating a protest that never really came – maybe she'd exceeded everyone's quota for bizarre command decisions already and they'd just started taking them in stride. "You've got knowledge about the cannon, you seem keen on the idea, and to be honest I'd enjoy keeping you out of trouble for the next little while."

The clone's face had gone stiff, uncomfortable. _Ah, right, the xenophobia thing. Good ol' predictable Cerberus._ "Sounds like a party," she said.

Garrus was going to sprain something if he kept clenching his jaw like that, but he didn't shy away from eye contact, didn't block her out this time, and she judged that his discomfort was more to do with having to work with the clone than having to follow a bad order. Good.

"That leaves-" she said, and paused as an alert flashed up on her readout. "Ah. I was waiting for that. They've sent out a shuttle to dock, probably to see what's going on with us, spring a trap if we've set one. Coming up nice and slow, ETA five minutes. We'll need a group up at the CIC to intercept them at the airlock. Ash?"

She grinned. "You got it. We can make use of those crawlspaces Traynor set us up with, the ones under the CIC. Should make for some nice surprises."

"Good thinking." Shepard considered for a moment. "Okay. I'll take Tia and Brooks. You can have Smith and, uh, Marshall."

"Always did get picked last for sports," Marshall said, with an elaborate sigh. "I swear I know how to shoot." He made a point of ignoring Tia's undignified snort.

Brooks crossed her arms. "Not that I'm not flattered to be working alongside the great Commander Shepard, but what makes you think I'll be any help in engineering?"

"Nothing," Shepard said. "I just figure you're most likely to want to cause a little chaos in all this so you can get away. I'd like to keep you close."

"I think I may swoon."

"Everyone clear on what they're doing?"

The clone actually half-raised her hand, then seemed to realize what she was doing and crossed her arms instead, in unconscious imitation of Brooks. "I've got some concerns, yeah."

"Great," Shepard said. "Not like we're in a rush, here. Strike team, go on ahead. We'll take the next elevator up."

Ash nodded and turned to the CAT6 soldiers. "Into the elevator, boys."

"And Ash?" Shepard waited for her to turn, then smiled, hoping it would show through in her voice despite the helmet. "Be careful. If you get overwhelmed, pull back to rendezvous with Garrus's group. Got it?"

She waved an acknowledgement, and the elevator doors closed on her smile.

Shepard turned back to the clone, who seemed to have noticed that she'd been mirroring Brooks's posture, and switched to swinging her arms awkwardly. "I don't get this," she burst out, a bit petulantly. "Why are you trusting us? Trusting me?"

"I'm not, really. I trust Garrus to keep you in line." But Shepard saw something deeper, more frustrated, beneath the surface of that question, and opted to speak to it instead. "You treat your enemies with respect, they'll generally come to respect you in turn. Might be childish, but it's worked for me so far."

"Mostly," Garrus said. He'd donned his helmet, and his speech was now coming in over a private channel, her ears only.

"Yeah. Mostly."

The clone shrugged, rolling her eyes, and moved back to confer with Brooks for a moment. Shepard turned to Garrus, wishing she could see through his helmet, wondering if his visor let him see through hers.

"You know I'm with you, Shepard," he said, and the outright belligerence was fading, replaced with a quivering intensity that was somehow familiar, a sort of desperate hunger just beneath the surface that unnerved her. "No matter what. But just- just make sure you're doing this for the right reasons. Trust is something that should be earned."

Hope, she realized, and the bottom dropped out of her stomach. That hunger, that weird, keyed-up energy-that was hope, that was wanting so badly to believe that things didn't always end with death and betrayal. _Trust should be earned,_ she thought, and in the face of that desperate need, she caught herself wondering if she could ever measure up. Not entirely sure she could trust her voice, she just nodded, glad for the helmet concealing her features.

"Well," he said, awkwardly breaking an uncomfortable silence, "just make sure you don't die horribly when I'm not there to watch your back."

"Right. I'll make sure to save any horrible dying until you're at my six," she said, solemnly.

"Okay, that... wasn't as inspiring as I'd hoped."

Shepard snorted a laugh, and beckoned to Tia and Brooks, heading for the elevator. "Yeah, well," she said. "You do what you can with what you have."


	4. Breakdown

Engineering was a mess.

It had somehow slipped Shepard's mind, in the midst of all the ship hijacking and evil cloning and flip-flopping of loyalties, that the _Normandy_'s repairs would logically be centered in engineering. She winced, picking her way over the loose panels and wiring that had been yanked out of place by the rough shaking of Cerberus's attack.

"Nice ship," Tia said.

"Oh, shut up."

Brooks was walking ahead, very pointedly keeping her hands visible at all times, acting like a model prisoner. The pantomime had the effect of being incredibly distracting, which Shepard supposed was the entire point. After a couple minutes of catching herself glancing over to make sure Brooks was still keeping up the act, Shepard ordered her over to work with Tia on clearing a path to the CBT's power source.

"Looks like we're one minute to engagement up here," Ash said, her voice a little hushed over the comm. Shepard felt a weird pang of anxiety at the mental picture of the three of them hidden in the crawlspace, waiting for who knew how many Cerberus soldiers to come pouring through the airlock. It was the control-freak side of her command style, she supposed. Ash was a Spectre. She'd do fine. _Of course, she's got a history of getting stuck following bad orders from incompetent COs..._

"I swear those proxy mines are set up properly," Marshall said. "That'll buy us some time."

Tia snorted, helping Brooks drag a panel out of the way. "Wouldn't factor that into your planning."

"Aw, now that just isn't-"

"The moment of death is upon us all," Smith said, softly, in the same deadpan tone of voice he'd used in the shuttle bay.

Dead silence echoed over the line for a long moment.

"Uh," Marshall said, "is it too late to switch teams?"

"Ah, CAT6," Tia said, brightly. "Best of the dregs!"

"Can it," Ash said. "They're boarding. We're in position, Skipper."

"Garrus?"

"Yeah, we're here," he said, distractedly, and Shepard had to hide a grin. That was a much more comforting mental picture, Garrus moving from console to console, trying to figure out what the hell someone had done this time to mess up his calibrations. _Mind you, the addition of the evil clone does make it a little less warm and fuzzy._

"How about you, uh." She paused, realizing for the first time that she'd successfully avoided calling the clone by name until now. Calling her 'Clone' wouldn't do much to engender the level of trust she was hoping for, and no way in hell was she going to call her 'Shepard'. _Cloney? Mini-me?_ "Uh. You."

"Me?" the clone said. "I'm here. Helping the turian figure this stuff out. Nice gun."

"Don't get too comfortable," Garrus muttered.

An explosion echoed over the comm, and Shepard froze, raising a hand automatically to the side of her head as she waited for her HUD to update, cursing the slight between-decks lag induced by the proximity to the ship's Silaris armor. "Ash?"

Static flared over the line for a second, and then Ashley's voice came through, shaking a bit with an adrenaline rush. "Oh, man. That was beautiful! We're going to have some cosmetic cleanup to do up here. Two down, and you'd better believe the rest are thinking twice about coming aboard just now."

"I fucking told you!" Marshall crowed.

"Yeah, yeah," Tia muttered, finally pushing past the last fallen panel to reach a console. "Jerk off on your own time, Marshall."

"Death waits for us all," Smith intoned. This time, everyone managed to ignore him with minimal effort.

Shepard had just pulled up Tia's calculations on her own console when Garrus's voice snapped across the comm like a whip. "_Damn_ it. Shepard, something's wrong. The targeting array's cycling randomly."

"What, like, modulating? Isn't that how it's supposed to work against cyclonic shields?"

"No, I mean it's setting random targets. The Cerberus ship, fifty thousand miles from the Cerberus ship. At this rate, it's probably got Palaven somewhere in the list!"

Shepard pursed her lips, pulling up a schedule on her omnitool. "Weapons maintenance wasn't supposed to be until tomorrow. Far as I can tell, nobody's been in the battery since we left. Is it because EDI's down?"

"Can't be." A short snap signalled the switch from public to private comm channels. "Shepard, I think this is deliberate."

"Whoever signalled the Cerberus ship, you mean?" Shepard cast a sidelong glance toward Brooks, who caught the motion and raised her hands, waggling her fingers to show they were empty, just as she had done the last twenty times Shepard had looked over at her. "Okay, I really don't like this. Anything you can do?"

"I'll look into it. Just don't pop up those shields until we're ready here, or Cerberus will take them down again."

"You got it. Anything to avoid getting back to square one."

"Well, that silence seemed nice and secretive," Brooks drawled. "So much for keeping trust."

Shepard swapped back to the public comm channel. "Hit the button by accident," she deadpanned. "It happens. Tia, how are things on your end?"

She flashed a thumbs-up. "Surprisingly? Not that bad. That's the advantage with thinking outside the box, I guess. No need to wait for someone to unpack it."

"Nice work," Shepard said, vaguely, and opened a subroutine to run a trace on any signals originating from the gunnery systems. "Ash?"

"Still waiting here, Commander. We've pulled back a bit in case they got any bright ideas from the proxy mines."

"Nah, they wouldn't use explosives," Marshall said. "They want to take the CIC intact, right?"

"In my experience," Ash said, "Cerberus isn't really known for forward-thinking."

"Oh."

Shepard's omnitool pinged, and she glanced down to see the results of the scan for anomalous activity in the targeting system. "Garrus, are you on targeting controls right now?"

"Yeah, we're both resetting the algorithm. Should be... hm. Are you seeing this spike?"

A long pause. Eventually, the clone said, "Huh?"

"The spike," Garrus said. "In the power readings. Console's in front of you."

"Readings?" The clone's voice was low, dazed. "I, uh. Hang on. What?"

This time, when Shepard shot a glance at Brooks, she caught a startled, concerned expression flicking across her face, though it was quickly replaced by the usual sardonic smile.

"Are you okay?" Garrus managed to ask the question without the faintest hint of warmth, but Shepard caught the quaver of uncertainty in his subvocals. "Uh, Shepard, I think your clone might be defective. She's looking really confused."

"No, I'm fine," the clone said, and took a deep breath that echoed over the line. "I'm fine. I don't know what that was. I'm-"

A loud blast echoed over the comm, making them all jump. "Ash?"

Ashley took a second to come in. "I-no, Commander, that wasn't us. They're still hanging back. I don't-"

Shepard's heart clenched in her chest as her HUD belatedly registered a flicker in Garrus's kinetic barriers. "Garrus? What the hell was that?"

Long moments passed, and then the clone said, "Ow. Um. Something overloaded here."

Garrus's voice was raspy, but his vitals still read strong on her HUD. "Okay, this is not good. Some sort of pocket explosive was in here, Shepard. Had to be planted."

"You okay?" Shepard saw Brooks smirk at the question, but couldn't resist asking. She needed to hear it from him.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just got the wind knocked out of me." Another click back to private comms, and his voice sank to a whisper. "Shepard, I don't like this. I'm pretty sure that device wasn't there when we came in."

"You're saying the clone planted it."

"I'm saying it definitely wasn't me."

Shepard balled her hand into a fist and narrowly stopped herself from slamming it on the console in front of her. "And I guess this means we're out one cannon."

"It'll take hours to get it up and running, assuming we don't need extra parts. We need a new plan, Shepard."

She raised a hand to her face, forgetting for the tenth time that her helmet was in the way of her aching head. "This is bad."

"Well, it's certainly not good."

She lowered her hand to see Brooks and Tia watching her curiously. "Okay. You bring the clone back here. Try not to confront her until she's given up her weapon and there are more of us around. Be subtle."

He snorted. "I'm always subtle."

Shepard didn't particularly feel like lightening the mood. "Just don't underestimate her because she's wearing a familiar face."

"If I just pause meaningfully for a few seconds, will you get the point I'm trying to make?"

That did make her crack a faint grin. "Okay. I get it. Very clever."

"Subtle, right?"

"Incredibly subtle."

Switching to the open comm, she said, "Okay. We've had a setback in the main battery. Garrus's team is pulling back here. Again, strike team, don't hesitate to retreat if you need to."

"Still no sign of anyone else here," Ashley said. "It's actually really quiet. No chatter on their end or anything."

"Do we even know if there are any other people in the shuttle?" Marshall asked. "I didn't see anyone other than those first two."

"Come to think of it," Ash said, sounding a little sheepish, "I don't remember seeing anyone else. If it really is just a scouting party... huh. Could be. I say we move in closer."

Shepard considered, but it seemed safe enough with the airlock to act as bottleneck. "We could use the good news. Be careful."

"We are, after all, alone in the end," Smith said. Everyone ignored him.

"And hey, what kind of setback are we talking about here?" Brooks chimed in. "A minor-adjustments-are-necessary setback or an everyone-dies-horribly setback? Because I've had my fair share of the latter and they never end well."

"It might be a problem," Shepard said. "We need to find a-"

She heard nothing over the comms but a sharp intake of breath and faint clatter, but it was enough to make her pause. A moment later, in the next update of her HUD's readouts, Garrus's kinetic barriers dropped away entirely and his vitals flared.

Shepard's SMG was in her hand a split-second later, and a full-body shiver and bitter taste in her mouth signalled a positively massive jolt of adrenaline. With tremendous effort, she kept herself rooted to the spot, watching Tia and Brooks carefully for any sign of movement, in case this was the first wave of some sort of attack. Hell, the readout could easily be a malfunction. They hadn't done much testing of the combat comm system within the ship, and with so much experimental technology to muddy the signal...

She could hold her position, but she sure as hell couldn't keep her voice steady. "Garrus! What the hell was that?"

He was breathing, at least, harsh wavering gasps. "Shepard? I'm okay. I'm fine. I-" Another clatter. This one she recognized with a chill as armor against deckplates. "The clone's gone. She attacked me, brought out an omniblade from nowhere." He paused for a moment, but finally spoke up again, his voice fainter. "You need to stop her. She was raving, talking about ramming us into the Cerberus ship. I think she's going to try to pilot us from the console you opened in engineering."

"She doesn't have authorization," Shepard said, functioning mostly on autopilot while the rest of her mind helpfully insisted on playing a vivid slideshow of memories of Garrus downed and bleeding to death on a dirty Omega floor, but then it clicked. "No, she does, doesn't she? She's got authorization."

"We're clear up here," Ash cut in, sharply. "Shepard, I'm coming down. You need to get to the shuttle bay."

"I'm fine," Garrus said. "Looks worse than it is."

Now Shepard's feet felt positively rooted to the spot. She didn't bother switching the channel to private. "You've said that before," she said.

"She tried to slit my throat," Garrus said, bluntly, but his voice was still wavering, his subvocals distorted. "I'm awake and talking to you, Shepard. It's not that bad."

"I'll get to him in a second," Ash said, and now she was the one who flicked her channel to private. "Shepard, you need to move. You can't freeze up now."

Shepard moved.

She'd made a point of learning the alternative between-deck routes in case of elevator malfunction – after the Citadel, she'd always been a little wary of elevators – and the series of ladders and passages connecting engineering to the shuttle bay passed in a blur. Once she reached the door nearest the side of the bay that housed the control panel, she made herself pause before going in, then activated a combat drone and rounded the corner, weapon raised.

There was nobody at the console.

She exhaled harshly, letting her arms drop as another wave of adrenaline crashed uselessly against her body. "_Dammit_."

"Oh, God," Ashley murmured, over the comm, and Shepard blocked it out, she had to block it out, she had to focus.

She moved again, dodging mechanically through the maze of crates, clearing the room according to standard Alliance protocol, reducing everything to lines of sight, geometry. She'd made it about halfway across the room when a familiar voice came over the comm.

"Is he okay?" the clone said.

Shepard was, on the whole, a reasonably controlled person. She rarely raised her voice, avoided violence as much as her line of work permitted, and even before the destruction of the SR-1, she'd maintained decidedly low blood pressure for someone who ran around almost getting killed for a living. She kept a firm rein on destructive stress, transformed it into something productive. Something optimistic.

If the clone had been standing in front of her right now, unarmed and helpless, Shepard wouldn't have hesitated to shoot her in the gut and watch her bleed out. Black and white. Fuck grey.

"You," she said, "don't get to ask that question."

"I'm sorry," the clone said, hollow, echoing. "I should have seen it sooner. I thought I was free, but you don't get that when you're a thing built for a purpose. You don't get to be free. Did they do it to you, I wonder? How deep did it go? I tried digging beneath the skin and I can't find it, I can't find it."

Shepard didn't rise to the bait, moving through the next line of crates. She didn't hear any audio doubling, which made it unlikely that the clone was anywhere nearby. Had she somehow made it back to the CIC? Surely someone would have seen her. Surely-

"The turian. They wanted me to kill him. Take my gun and shoot. I fought it as best I could. I didn't shoot."

Shepard's feet stumbled to a halt almost of their own volition. "What?"

"The control chip." The clone inhaled sharply, choking down what sounded like a sob. Hearing herself cry was downright eerie. "They implanted me with a control chip, right from the start. Brooks didn't know. Maybe. I don't know. Maybe she was part of it. It doesn't matter. It's Cerberus. They play the long game. They didn't need me anymore, but they played me all the same, because they knew I'd get to you, eventually. I'd have to. I didn't have anything else."

Now Shepard's heart was pounding so hard she could feel the throbbing in her fingertips, and her injured knee wobbled, forcing her to reach out for a crate to catch her balance. "You signalled the ship? Brought them here?"

"I don't remember doing it. I lost minutes, sometimes. I figured it was stress, trying to pull off this big heist." She laughed, and in place of bitterness it was tinged with something darker, something empty. "I thought I'd done it, made something that was mine. One fucked-up plan. One ship. One crew. A future. But we don't get futures. We're something that's built. Something that's made. A weapon to be fired, sooner or later. Both of us, just weapons. No, not even. We're bullets. Bullets."

Shepard took a breath, kept moving. "So they're telling you to ram the ship. Why?" She rounded another corner, and stumbled.

The shuttle bay door was opening, the remaining shuttle rising slowly off the deck.

"No," the clone said. "No, this one's all me."

"Uh, Commander," Tia said, over the comm, sounding oddly subdued. "The Cerberus ship just lost shields."

"Shepard," Brooks said, and Shepard realized she was addressing the clone, her voice cool and controlled with something strained just below the surface. "You read that in one of your books?"

The clone gave a choked laugh. "Yeah," she said. "Kept a manual of Cerberus encryption and security protocols under my pillow each night. You should try it sometime."

The shuttle's engines flared, near enough that the blast of heat made Shepard stumble back a pace, and then the shuttle had passed through the protective bay shielding and moved out into the starscape beyond. "Wow," the clone said, softly. "Top speed on this thing's pretty great. Twenty seconds to impact."

"You-"

"It's okay," the clone said. "You and me, we do what we're made for. Someone else is always pointing the gun. No future in it." She breathed twice over the line, slowly, like she was savoring it. "But thanks for trying."

Static. Silence.

"Holy hell," Marshall said. "Holy fucking hell. Ship's gone. Shuttle's gone. They just, holy hell."

Shepard turned, in a daze, and stumbled through grey corridors, grey rooms, everything faint and faded around the edges. She knew she was due for one hell of an adrenaline crash. She didn't much care.

She saw Ash first, crouched at the entrance to the main battery, her blue armor bright and foreboding, and then she moved closer and saw the splashes of deeper blue on the ground, no fast-growing pool like Omega, just streaks of blood, bright, angular. _Arterial spray,_ her brain said, and then stuttered to a halt.

Garrus was huddled on his side, eyes half-closed, but his chest was rising and falling, and a thick smear of medigel was slathered across his throat. Ash glanced up and smiled faintly, and Shepard realized for the first time that she'd removed one of her gauntlets and that her right hand was completely covered in blue blood.

"Hey," she said. "He's okay. Nicked an artery, but I managed to pinch it off until the medigel closed it for me. Turians have three redundant arteries supplying blood to their brain, you know that? You can clamp one off and he'll be fine for days." She seemed to realize she was rambling and snapped her mouth shut, but the nervous, adrenaline-fuelled grin kept creeping back to the surface. "Never thought I'd paid much attention in xenobio. Just popped back into my head. He's a little groggy from the meds and blood loss, but he'll be okay, Shepard."

Shepard summoned up something approximating a returning smile, though it probably just looked sick, and slumped to her knees beside them, dragging off her helmet. Garrus's helmet, she noticed, was still carefully placed on a console not far away. At this rate, he should probably start wearing it to bed, given how often horrible things seemed to happen when he took it off.

"Hey," she said, amazed at how steady her voice sounded. She touched the side of his face, and his mandibles fluttered, eyes flickering fully open.

"Hi," he said, and made as though to push himself up, then paused when both Shepard and Ashley moved to restrain him. "What... what happened?"

"My clone almost tore your throat out. Ring any bells?"

Garrus blinked, then exhaled slowly. "Ah. Right. That."

Her questing hand found his, squeezed reassuringly. "How're you feeling?"

He thought about it. "Remarkably like a clone almost tore my throat out."

She snorted a laugh that was a little shakier than she would've liked. "Are you going to stop doing this to me?"

He made a show of pondering her question, although the effect was spoiled somewhat by the way his eyes kept drifting shut. "I'll give it due consideration."

Squeezing his hand a little tighter, she contorted herself enough to press her forehead awkwardly against his. "Mm. And are you going to rest a bit now?"

"Mm," he echoed, and this time his eyes stayed shut. His breathing evened out again, slow and strong and reassuring.

Shepard leaned back, managed another quavering smile for Ashley. "Thanks. I needed that push back there."

"Sure. God knows you've been my wakeup call enough times over the years." She paused for a moment, tilted her head to one side. "You okay, Shepard? That was... well, that was a lot of bad stuff to hear. All that absolute bullshit."

Shepard watched Garrus's chest rise and fall, rise and fall, and thought about too-sad eyes in familiar faces, about reflections and mirrors and the lessons they held.

"Yeah," she said. "Absolute bullshit."


	5. Daybreak

Shepard woke up slowly, half-mumbling the last remnants of a dream into her pillow, and managed a contorted version of a stretch carefully designed to avoid jostling the warm mass pressed flush against her back.

Her eyes flickered open eventually despite her best efforts, and even the unfamiliar orange glow of the bedroom wasn't enough to push her fully awake. Somewhere totally unrecognizable was fine, as long as it meant she could finally sleep in. Just for one morning.

Behind her, Garrus exhaled heavily, a sure sign that he was still out for the count. She rolled cautiously onto her other side, grinning. It took serious effort to wake up before Garrus Vakarian, and she tamped down a childish urge to draw something on his face while he slept. Probably best not to mess with sleeping boyfriends who also happened to possess extremely large teeth.

So she propped herself up on one elbow and looked beyond him, out to the orange glow coming in through the translucent blinds. _Right. Anderson's apartment. My apartment. Whatever._ Her hamster, rescued from the _Normandy_ with a mandate to give the little guy some shore leave of his own, was jogging in his wheel, making a comforting scritch-scritch typically overshadowed by the hum of the ship's engines. Judging by all the neon outside, she and Garrus had either slept for only a couple hours or managed to sleep straight through to the next night cycle. The low rumbling in her stomach suggested the latter, and an annoying jolt of panic made her run through a mental to-do list before she managed to reassure herself that she'd done everything that needed doing today.

The rumble also seemed to have alerted Garrus, who exhaled again, more emphatically, and then instinctively draped an arm around her to pull her closer in a move that was half-stretch, half-hug. She couldn't stifle a giggle, trapped against his chest, and she watched with fascination as he dragged himself gradually out of sleep and into a vague semblance of alertness, his eyes flickering open and slowly sharpening to focus on her.

"Morning," she said.

"Murg," he said, eloquently, and slumped back, closing his eyes again.

_Okay, 'alertness' is such a strong word._

If she was hungry, though, he must be halfway to starving. She'd at least managed to sneak a sandwich while he was stuck at the hospital getting his cut sealed up, although the six hours of debriefings and security checks that had followed had been woefully snack-free. Apparently evil-clone stories were a nightmare when it came to administrative paperwork, doubly so when said evil clones impersonated Spectres.

Her crew had stepped up as she'd known they would – not two hours after regaining control of the _Normandy_, they'd been met by a strange formation of Council and non-Council vessels that the crew had managed to drum up. In so doing, unfortunately, they'd executed what EDI proudly called a prison break, since Brooks had seen fit to warn the Council that Shepard's entire crew was showing signs of indoctrination and delusions, which had resulted in a plenitude of unpleasant encounters with C-Sec officers. And, of course, another volley of paperwork.

Shepard's eyelids were drooping again. _Maybe breakfast can wait after all. No bullets flying now._

Remembering, she touched a hand to the side of her head, and sure enough, the skin there was smooth, unblemished, even where the worst of the shrapnel from Tia's shot had hit.

The CAT6 soldiers and Brooks had all been extremely subdued after the Cerberus ship was destroyed, and none of them made a move to escape custody when Alliance officials were finally on the scene. Shepard had put in a good word for the CAT6 soldiers, though, and had managed to secure a moment alone with Tia before she was taken into custody.

"You're a bright kid," she'd said. "We could use you. There's a project-"

"Yeah," Tia had said. "I kinda figured. There's always a project." She'd smiled, and looked a little older than she had before. "No offense, Shepard, but that's not for me. I don't get used."

And then she'd been gone.

Shepard realized she was still rubbing her temple and pulled her hand away. The whole super-healing thing still creeped her out a bit, but the cybernetics certainly had their advantages. _Still, it'd be nice to have some scars to show for the whole adventure. Might as well stop letting Garrus hog them all._

She propped herself up again, traced a finger along the thin line that ran half a hand's-breadth across his throat, barely visible as it transitioned into the deeper, older scarring from Omega.

No. She didn't envy him his scars.

He made a low rumbling in his throat, soft and amused, and opened his eyes a slit. "Yes, they put me back together again. You always have to check their handiwork, don't you?"

"Hm," she said, tracing her finger back and forth, thoughtfully. "I think they may have attached the snarky head in place of the usual one. We'll give them a call in the morning."

He blinked. "Isn't it morning?"

She backed off a bit so he could look out the window. "Evening again. Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty."

"Sleeping-" He squinted at her, half-opened his mouth, then closed it again. "Never mind. I don't really want to know."

They lapsed into a comfortable silence, and she pressed a bit closer, resting her head against his chest, listening to his breathing while his hand at the small of her back traced slow circles. "So," he said, softly, "after all that, what's next?"

She felt herself tense up, then exhaled slowly. "I've been thinking about it, what the clone said. About the future. And it's-I mean, it's ridiculous. I know there's always a way out. I can always think of the next step, and the step after that. No matter how hard things get, there's a tomorrow out there somewhere. Only now-" She sighed again, and felt his hand still. "I don't know. Now I can't see past today. I think she was right, Garrus. I think everyone's set me up to be a perfect bullet, a spearhead, and after I've done what I'm made for, that's it. I'm done."

"I think you had something to do with the whole Shepard legend," he said, with a nervous attempt at a smile. "Just a hunch."

"Garrus-"

"I thought that way on Omega, you know," he said, and she could hear the old uneasiness in his subvocals. "Right up until you showed up, there was... there was nothing. My friends were dead, and all I had was this gun, and I just kept shooting long past the point where I knew what was happening. I never consciously went, well, this is it, this is the end of Garrus Vakarian. I just knew there was no way out."

Shepard shifted against him, trying for a more comfortable position. "Yeah. No way out."

"But there was," he said, softly. "You remember. You were there. You pulled me out. I just couldn't see it at the time. There's always a way out."

"Sometimes I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or needlessly optimistic," she said, echoing back his words from the battlefield.

"Sometimes I think you're actually turning me into an optimist, Shepard. Terrifying thought."

She snorted a laugh in spite of herself. "You realize zombie COs are a bit of a bolt from the blue. Not sure we can count on that happening twice."

"Why not? Stranger things have happened."

"Maybe," she said, and edged out from under his arm to lie flat on her back, staring at the ceiling. "I just-" She blew out her breath. "I just want something like this, you know? Working on some engineering project, going to the store, buying food, cleaning the apartment. Waking up next to you."

He snorted. "You'd be bored stiff within a week."

"I'd settle for one day." She tried to laugh with him, but it rang hollow. "I'm tired, Garrus. Just really, really tired."

Garrus was quiet for a long moment, breathing beside her, slow and cautious, and then he said, "One day?"

She sighed. "Yeah. One day. They've expedited repairs, cancelled the extra week of shore leave. Can't possibly imagine why."

He curled onto his side, tilting his head. No visor to hide his expression this time. "You can do a lot with one day. You can end wars, save the galaxy, rescue would-be vigilantes in over their heads. Try to save someone who doesn't want to be saved. Come out the better for it."

She smiled faintly. "I guess you can, at that."

He reached out, a little carefully, and rested a hand on hers. "Given all that, one day seems like plenty."

Another smile, just a bit stronger. "It does, at that."

They stayed like that for a while, quiet, savoring the soft bed and the warm light. Then Garrus said, "But, ah, I should mention that when I was asking what came next, I was expecting the answer to be 'breakfast'."

She burst out laughing so loudly and suddenly that he jumped, and then she grabbed her pillow and swatted him with it. "All that wisdom came from an empty stomach, huh?"

"I'll have you know that I am a wise and respected member of the turian Hierarchy," he said, projecting dignity in spite of his flailing attempts to ward off the pillow. "Important people listen to what I have to say!"

"Oh, we're doomed," Shepard said, and swatted him once more for good measure. Breathing hard, she rolled out of bed, wincing at the cool floor against her feet, and made a point not to look toward the mirror in the bathroom, to the reflection waiting there with too-serious eyes. "I say we start this day off with a nice late-night breakfast. That's my wisdom. What do you think, Vakarian?"

He grinned up at her. "I think I'm right behind you."


End file.
